Open Source Shakespeare

Sonnets

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Act I, Scene 118

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  • Shakespeare. Like as, to make our appetites more keen, 1640
    With eager compounds we our palate urge,
    As, to prevent our maladies unseen,
    We sicken to shun sickness when we purge,
    Even so, being tuff of your ne'er-cloying sweetness,
    To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding 1645
    And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness
    To be diseased ere that there was true needing.
    Thus policy in love, to anticipate
    The ills that were not, grew to faults assured
    And brought to medicine a healthful state 1650
    Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cured:
    But thence I learn, and find the lesson true,
    Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.